Tag Archives: user experience

What if I told you that shiny stock image you just spent an hour searching for didn’t help you? Or if I said that the hundreds of dollars you’ve given iStockPhoto has actually hurt your site?

Recent research from renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen suggests that “users pay attention to information-carrying images that show content that’s relevant to the task at hand. And users ignore purely decorative images that don’t add real content to the page.” (emphasis his) So, what does this mean for public relations?

Press pages need to be user friendly
Nielsen used eye-tracking studies to show that unless the photo is of the specific person or product being researched, most website visitors will skip it. The screenshot below is from his study and shows that the relatively low-quality photo being used on this Yale contact form is essentially wasted space. Continue reading →